Bryce Moore's Blog, page 198

A Less Sugar-full Life Update

It’s now been three months since I bid adieu to the sort of sugar-infused life I’d led up until three months ago. If you didn’t read why I did it, a quick refresher: I was always tired, and I thought going without sugar might help me feel better. I haven’t given it up completely. I don’t avoid anything with the tiniest bit of sugar in it. If bread has sugar as an ingredient, for example, I still eat it. But what I really gave up was the constant chowing down on all things sweet. The brownies, the ice cream, the cake, the jam, the soda. If something exists primarily to be sweet, I avoid it.

That was the goal, at least. I allowed myself a bit of wiggle room. 1-2 times a week, I could have something sweet. But that was it. Of course, the goal was also to update you all regularly about how I was doing. That’s something that hasn’t really happened.

However, I’m happy to say that I’m still firmly entrenched in my goal. The 1-2 times a week limit is enough for me to feel like I get something sweet now and then just fine, and I honestly don’t miss the stuff I was eating. (Okay. Maybe a little. Especially when the kids are having sundaes or something.)

I do think I feel better. Yes, it might be the placebo effect at work, but here’s the thing: that doesn’t matter. Going up to someone who says he’s feeling better and telling him he isn’t? Why do that? If I say I’m feeling better, then I’m feeling better. I’m less tired. I have more energy. It’s a good thing.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this whole experiment has been the reactions of other people. I think some have taken it as a personal criticism of what they eat. They get defensive about sugar, and they tell me how it’s really not that bad. Let me be perfectly clear: I don’t think any less of anyone who eats sugar. This is a personal choice, plain and simple. My family still eats plenty of sweet stuff, and I don’t hold it against them at all.

At the same time, a lot of people try to “catch” me cheating. I’ll be seen eating a cookie or something, and they’ll smile and say “Done with the no sugar thing, huh?” Or express doubts that I ever really gave it up to begin with. I tell them I allow myself 1-2 sweet things a week, but they typically don’t seem to believe me.

I don’t really mind either of these reactions. As a Mormon, I’m used to not eating and drinking things many other people eat or drink. I’ve been declining iced tea my whole life, for example. I don’t think it’s bad for people to drink, and I don’t think less of people who do drink it. It’s just not something that I personally consume.

And the reactions are becoming less and less frequent as time goes by. People are getting used to me like this. Surprisingly, I’m getting used to it too. I’d thought I’d need to keep posting about it to keep me motivated, but I’ve stopped posting mainly because it hasn’t been necessary.

The weight loss I saw right after cutting off sugar has stopped, but I have yet to gain anything. I eat as much as I want, when I want, and I stay the same weight. That’s a really nice feeling. True, I’m probably 10-15 pounds heavier than I ought to be, but I’ll try to deal with that at a future date. One thing at a time.

In any case, I’m just mainly here to report back cheerfully that all is going as planned, and I’m very pleased with the results. Thanks for reading, and have a lovely weekend!

Fun with Bunk Beds

The slow but steady drive to get MC and DC into the same room continues. Denisa and I had been looking for bunk beds for quite some time. The original plan had been to buy a set that had stairs with them–make it easy for whoever got the top bunk. But as we looked into the matter further, it became clear that those stairs came with a price, and were we really willing to put down $800-$1200 for the bunk beds?

In the end, we decided that no, we were not.

So we put down $180, instead, on a set from (yup) Walmart. The price was right, and these aren’t beds we’re planning on leaving as part of the inheritance or anything, so why not? (Note: I might come to realize why not in a few years. That’s certainly a risk I’m taking with buying cheaper furniture. But with the amount I’m saving, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.) That’s a picture of them at the top of this entry, except ours is dark brown. Espresso, I believe.

Tuesday, the beds arrived, compactly packed in a small box. I cracked my knuckles and my neck, opened the box, and got to work.

Three and a half hours later, the beds were complete. Somehow, I managed to follow all the directions well enough that I only needed to break out the power drill once. (When you discover you’ve put something together backwards, you can either take it all apart and put it together the right way, or start drilling new holes. It turns out I’m a “start drilling new holes” kind of a guy now. Especially after 3.5 hours of working on the blasted thing.)

TRC and DC helped me throughout the process. (Well, TRC did manage to get distracted by a book about 4/5ths of the way through. You put anything with words in front of that boy, and he’s gone. I’m telling you.) But they were excited to see it come together, and it was (more or less) a fun project. A few observations about the process:

Having to assemble everything with an allen wrench is its own form of torture. Can we not just assume all people have access to screwdrivers? My hands are still recovering.
Sometimes when you think you’ve put something on backwards and decide to drill new holes, maybe you should look at the diagram again and think it over. It might be easier to switch things around than you thought it would be.
Whenever you decide to assemble the bunk beds, mother nature will make sure it’s the hottest day in a while. Because hot. Bring a fan.

Of course, it was only after the bed arrived that I started measuring the existing furniture to figure out where it all needs to go. And that’s when I discovered that the futon I’d planned to put in DC’s old room literally doesn’t fit into that room. Pro-tip: don’t assume you know the size of your rooms. Always measure first.

So now we have to decide if TRC is going to sleep on the futon in his room, or if his room needs to move as well. Either which way, we need to move a chest of drawers, a bed, and the futon to make sure everything fits, as well as sell off a few other pieces of furniture. Because nothing is ever easy.

And now I’ve just managed to take up a whole post by describing assembling bunk beds. Maybe next time I can talk about the joy of watching paint dry.

Pick Your Own YA Fantasy Part 8

[Welcome to part eight of my continuing blog series. I write the book, you pick the plot. For earlier parts, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7.]

John’s gut said to go to the eyeball. It had the clearest connection to the Tome of Ra, after all. Too bad he couldn’t have the book look at the page, but something told him that ripping the map out of the tome would be a mistake.

He got ready to say they were going to head toward the eyeball. The words were on the tip of his tongue, even. But they paused there like a five year old on the high dive board, looking over the edge and reconsidering. Liese had been right so far. She had said they should go to the door. Maybe it was time for him to actually pay attention to what she was suggestion.

“We’ll go to the door,” he said. “You’re right. It’s probably the way in.”

Liese didn’t give any hint of satisfaction that he’d chosen to go with her choice. She just nodded and smiled, and somehow that dimple made it seem like his decision should have been easy all along.

What did John’s gut know about Egyptian labyrinths, after all?

The two of them shuffled through the dust and through the passage on the left, their footsteps muffled and the light of the phone stark and white on the stone around them. John could picture the ancient Egyptians walking down these corridors thousands of years ago, the surroundings bathed in torchlight. Who had caused this maze to be created? Was it Khalid? The pharaoh? And where did the side passages go? A picture of a bandaged wrapped hand reaching out from a sarcophagus flashed through his head, and he quickened his pace.

“Come on.” he said. “We should hurry.”

Liese didn’t object. It might have been the light, but she looked paler too. Nervous?

Probably just John wishing he weren’t alone. He scolded himself for getting nerves at a time like this. Kids at his school would give up their allowance for a year to be doing this. John would have been one of them if someone had told him this story in a different circumstance. But now that he was walking through the crumbling tunnels of the great pyramid, he discovered it was one thing to hear a great story, and something entirely different to live through one.

The further they went, the worse his gut got to feeling. It became harder and harder to take each step, a feeling a dread seeping out from the humid rocks around him. If Liese hadn’t been there, he would have gladly turned around and ran back to the main chamber. Why hadn’t he chosen the eyeball instead? This felt wrong. But he didn’t want to admit he was scared, and so he kept going, doing his best to stay focused on the map and make sure he was picking the right way as they went. He passed up one passageway that led to a crocodile, and another that had what looked like a knife at the end of it.

The sooner they could get to that door, the sooner they’d be done with this.

Liese’s hand brushed his, and he wished more than anything that he could hold it, for no other reason than that some of her courage might rub off on him. Their footsteps echoed off the walls, loud and clear.

“John,” Liese said, quietly.

“What?” His voice trembled when he answered.

“When did the dust go away?”

John blinked and looked down. Sure enough, there wasn’t a speck of dust to be seen. He scrambled to think why that would be the case. “Maybe there’s some sort of spell on the floor that makes it so dust doesn’t accumulate,” he said. “Or . . . the dust in the main chamber was just from all the tourists over the years?”

Liese nodded. “Good point.”

They kept walking. It was a good thing John was so good with mazes. It would be too easy to get lost in all these turns. All the passages looked the same, and there were no markings one way or the other to tell them which way to go. If he took the wrong turn, they might end up at one of the different pictures. Some of those pictures hadn’t seemed too friendly. Not that anything would still be alive down here, not thousands of years after the pyramid was sealed.

At least, that’s what he told himself when he began to hear footsteps that weren’t coming from him or Liese.

At first he thought it was just a trick of the passageways. The sound was bouncing off the clean walls and coming back to them from a different direction. But every now and then, one of the steps sounded more like a scuffle or a scrape. Almost like claws on stone, though other times it sounded more muffled, like a padded paw. And there was no way John or Liese was making either of those noises.

And the sound was coming from behind them.

“Do you hear that?” John whispered after one such noise.

Liese took his hand and squeezed. Answer enough. John glanced over his shoulder, back at the way they had come. Nothing but darkness behind them, but if Liese was hearing this too, then it was clear:

Something was following them.

He could either start rushing to the door (which might or might not be the way out) or try and set up an ambush for the whatever-it-was. Maybe if he could spot it, they’d have a better chance of dealing with it. They could duck into a side passage and turn off the phone’s flashlight. It would be dark, and there was no way of knowing if the thing could see in the dark better than they could, but it might be safer than hurrying toward that door. He still felt uneasy even thinking about that destination.

Make a Choice

Hurry onward or set up an ambush? No clear favorites here . . .

Regarding JJ Abrams and Genre

I’m a big fan of JJ Abrams. I loved Alias (well, until it started getting ridiculous, at least), Lost (even the ending!), Super 8, both the new Star Treks, Fringe (though I have yet to finish the show), and I’m extremely excited for the upcoming Star Wars movie. JJ Abrams is certainly one of the current standard bearers when it comes to science fiction and geekdom. But I think one of the reasons he makes such good work is that he didn’t start by making movies with lots of explosions and special effects.

He started with movies like Regarding Henry.

That’s right, 25 years before he got to direct Harrison Ford as Han Solo, he got to write a drama about Harrison Ford overcoming a severe brain injury. He even got to share a scene with Han, though unfortunately I can’t find the clip online at the moment. He’s very clearly the food delivery boy in the movie.

Now, Regarding Henry isn’t viewed as one of the great movies of all time. It’s only got a 6.7 rating on IMDB, but Denisa and I watched it last night, and it’s certainly a very solid entry as a drama. I found it thought provoking and moving, with excellent acting by Ford and Annette Bening. It’s a very well put together movie that hits all the major beats and executes them very well. It’s  on the predictable side, but other than that, I really liked it. 8.5 out of 10.

One of the many ways geek movies can go wrong is when creators put the explosions and the special effects first, in front of plot, character, and emotion. Do that too much, and you end up with a hollow movie. The pieces don’t fit together quite right, and the motivations just seem to be missing. In other words, they focus too much on being science fiction and too little on being an actual movie or story.

Sometimes people ask me if I think it’s important for writers to get a degree in English or to get an MFA, and I typically say no. There’s nothing you can only learn in a writing program. That said, there are some things you still need to know, and those are things that are often taught in a writing program. So while they don’t have a monopoly in the field, they are an excellent vehicle to learn those elements. Structure, story, character development, theme, etc.

Having watched Regarding Henry, it’s clear to me why Abrams can be so successful as a science fiction director. He understands the fundamentals of drama and what motivates characters. With that as a foundation, it becomes much easier to add on the genre trappings. This isn’t to say you don’t need to understand the conventions of the genre you’re working in, but rather that there are some basic story conventions that span across all genres. Don’t get those down, and no amount of chase scenes or explosions are going to save you.

Anyway. Check out Regarding Henry if you haven’t. It’s a solid movie. Thoughts?

Netflix Recommendation: Turn

Denisa and I were looking around for a new series to watch, and Netflix was telling me Turn would be a 5 star choice. I hadn’t heard of it before, but it’s focused on a Revolutionary War spy ring, which sounded more than a little cool, so we decided to give it a shot. What I didn’t know at the time, but which makes the show a whole lot cooler in my eyes, is that it’s actually based on real events. (See Alexander Rose’s Washington’s Spies book for more information.)

We finished the first season quite quickly, taking in all ten episodes in about a week. For the most part, I enjoyed them all (though I found episode 5 to be the weakest. I gave it just 2 stars, while the other episodes got between 3 and 4 (out of five) from me. Nothing quite at 5 stars, but for an obscure show I hadn’t heard of? I was very pleased.

What did I like?

I loved the way the setting informs the plot and the characters. No, this isn’t 100% historically accurate, but there were enough period details included to make me think about how people then would have lived and experienced the revolution. We study history and it’s too easy to assume people who lived then realized they were living in Important Times. This show illustrates the idea that people then were just living. They had opinions about the war and the rebellion, just like people today have opinions about current events.

The plot itself was fairly strong. Not quite as nuanced as I might have liked, but nothing to sniff at. The characters were well portrayed, and the conflicts engrossing. You get spoiled sometimes, binge watching the best shows on television and then going to watch something else. Is Turn on the level of The Wire? Nope. But it’s still worth your time.

What didn’t I like?

Every now and then, the show insisted the characters have modern outlooks on life. The worst of this was in episode 5, where suddenly the characters were revealed to have had slaves for all this time. (Almost no characters of race had been present until then.) And then of course the slaves are portrayed as having been buddy buddies with their masters, who are all really good people at heart. That really rang false, and it made me worry about the show. Thankfully, it got much better from there, with the slaves they introduced going on to play important roles in more believable ways.

Also, since this is cable television, they couldn’t resist throwing in some smut. Nothing nearly as egregious as HBO, but there’s some hanky panky now and then, and more than is really necessary to tell the story they’re trying to tell. (Although I guess I’m wrong, since the story they’re trying to tell apparently involves gratuitous hanky panky . . .) So be warned about that.

In any case, if you’ve been wanting something to watch, allow me to direct your attention to this. Only 10 episodes so far (season 2 is on regular television at the moment, I believe), but what’s there is good watching. Already seen it? Let me know what you thought.

Improving Over Time

I had a really busy day at work yesterday. Just going going going from when I got there until when I had to leave (late, since I had an interview scheduled at 4pm). But I knew throughout all that business that when I got home, I’d have to mow the lawn. Some things just wait for no one, you know? However, when I got home, TRC was already out going strong, and Denisa had gotten a good chunk of it done too.

In the end, I didn’t have to mow anything. TRC polished off the whole thing for me.

When I think back on the first time he mowed the lawn (one of my favorite blog posts of recent memory, actually), just last year, and compare it to how well he did yesterday, the difference is remarkable. That first day, TRC had to really work and struggle to get things done. He had a hard time identifying where the lawn had been mowed and where it hadn’t. Going in a straight line was tricky, and turns were even worse.

Yesterday? All of those things were gone. He knew how to handle turns, how to mow straight, where to mow. You name it. In my mind, I’d really been selling him short. Why was that?

As I think about it, it’s because what stood out in my memory was his first attempt last year. I’d pegged him at that level, even as he got a lot of practice as the year went on. Then we took a long break from mowing. When it came time to do it again, my memory defaulted to the clearest example of his abilities: the first time.

But all that practice had made him much much better than that.

I wonder how many times we do this in other areas. We maybe struggle with something for a while, and we decide that we’re just not that good at something, despite the fact that years later, after a bunch of practice, we’ve somehow become so much better.

It’s easy to miss slight improvements over time, but in many ways, those are exactly the sort of improvements that stick with you the most. Change too quickly, and it becomes too easy to change right back at an even faster rate. Look at weight loss, or New Years resolutions. Things that are done in a rush often end up poorly done. It’s the things that happen gradually that inevitably affect you the most. (Most of the time.)

I’ve found it helpful sometimes to take “snapshots” of myself or my abilities, so that I can compare them later on to how I’m doing. That’s when it becomes easy to see the growth. To tell that I’ve really been improving. It’s easy in areas like writing or blogging. All I have to do is go back to earlier posts or pieces to see what I’m doing differently. Videoing things can be another good marker of progress. Video a performance by a child, and then let them see that same performance a year later.

It can be a real motivator. A great way to prove to yourself that you’re getting better, and that you should stick with something. Because sometimes the greatest danger with gradual, positive change is that we don’t realize it’s actually happening. Faced with a lack of clear evidence, we might choose to give up doing the very things that are helping us most.

And that’s my deep thought for you this fine Thursday.

Pick Your Own YA Fantasy Part 7

[Welcome to part seven of my continuing blog series. I write the book, you pick the plot. For earlier parts, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6.]

“Liese?” John asked once the fall was over. There’d been a lot of tumbling involved, a few big jostles and bumps, and more elbows than he’d thought they had between the two of them, but they’d come to a rest at last, down at the bottom of a long ramp. Up above them, a small postage-stamp size spot of light showed the passage they’d come from. It had been a long fall. Even as he watched it, the light grew smaller and closed shut.

The trap door had closed, casting John and Liese into complete darkness.

“Liese?” John repeated. “Are you okay?” The air tasted musty, and his tongue was dry. When he breathed, it was like he was sucking down dust particles.

She coughed a couple of times, then said. “Maybe next time you should think about booby traps before you go pressing buttons.”

If she was well enough to criticize him, she was probably going to be okay. “Sorry,” he told her. “I didn’t know it would do that.”

“Do you have a flashlight?” she asked.

John patted himself down, on the off chance Khalid had given him something useful when he’d made the clothes magically appeared. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Do you?”

Liese sighed. “Boys. Never prepared.” And she clicked on the light of her smartphone, casting a ghostly white glow into the chamber where they’d landed.

A chamber filled with dust. When they’d fallen down, they must have kicked up a thousand years’ worth of the stuff. It hung in the air like a million hovering fairies, all bright specks of light wherever the phone’s beam struck them. It took a bit for it to clear, and John and Liese had to move slowly after that to avoid stirring up another dust cloud.

John and Liese sat up, carefully brushing themselves off. The chamber wasn’t very large: a square room that was about twenty feet on any side, and maybe seven feet tall. Three doorways led from the room, as well as the sloped passage that headed back toward the entrance. When John stood up and took a few steps back toward the ramp, however, a distant rumble sounded, and a legion of sharpened stakes popped out from the ramp’s floor, all of them pointing straight at John.

Trying to climb back out of this room would be a long haul, and they’d likely get sliced into ribbons.

“Looks like we aren’t heading out that way,” Liese said, coming to stand next to John. “Good thing we have the map.”

It took John a moment to remember the overhead diagram of the tunnels they’d seen in the Tome of Ra, but the book itself wasn’t in his pocket. Of course. I dropped it when we fell. John looked around the chamber for the Tome, beginning to panic when he didn’t see it immediately. There didn’t seem like the room had any hiding places, apart from all the dust. When he and Liese sifted through all that dust, they realized just how thick it was. In some places it was only an inch or so deep, but in others it had piled up well past half a foot. It took some scrounging, but he found the tome at last, tossed into a corner and looking quite a bit dirtier than he’d last seen it. The eye on the cover was blinking wildly, trying to free itself of all the dust that had gotten into it. John felt bad for the thing, and he tried to blow it clean.

The eye blinked a few more times in protest, then glared at him. Apparently that hadn’t helped.

Tough luck, John thought. He was only trying to help, and he was only in this mess for the book’s sake in the first place. He opened the tome and flipped through the pages until he found the overhead map again.

“We’re here, I think,” John said, pointing to the central chamber. Sure enough, three passages led off from it, branching into a tangled mess that quickly became hard to follow. Either ancient Egyptians weren’t too good at drawing maps, or they hadn’t wanted this one to be easy to understand.

“Sure,” Liese said. “But where is the entrance to the library?”

John stared at the book some more. He even tried turning it upside down, hoping that might make the map easier to decipher. He turned the page to look at what had come earlier in the book, but there wasn’t anything he was close to understanding. Just more Heiroglyphics.

“Wait!” Liese said. “Do that again?”

“What?”

“I thought I saw a watermark.” She held her light up to the map, shining it through the paper. Sure enough, with the light behind it, you could make out small symbols scattered throughout the map: a crocodile, an open door, a dagger, an eyeball. Ten or twenty of the little icons, each with an arrow pointing at one particular part of the map. “See?” Liese sounded more than a little proud of herself. “All we need to do is go to the door, and we’ll be done. This game is a bit simple.”

John frowned at the map, and tried to get a better look at the door. It did make sense, in a way. They needed the entrance to the library. “But what about this eyeball?” he asked. “The book has an eye on the cover. Maybe this is where it’s supposed to go.”

Liese shrugged. “We have to go somewhere. We can’t stay here. I don’t have any water, do you?”

Now that she mentioned it, John could really go for a nice cold glass of liquid. But she was right. When it came to being brave archaeologists, it appeared the two of them had a few things to learn. Indiana Jones never seemed like he forgot to bring water. John took another look at the map. As close as he could tell, the door on the right would take them to the eyeball eventually, though they’d have to go through several other symbols on the way. The passage on the left led toward the picture of the door.

He ignored the one in the middle for now. Clenching his jaw, he made a choice, hoping he sounded confident.

Make a Choice

Eyeball, Door, or Middle?

Avengers: Age of Ultron Movie Review

Denisa and I headed out to the theater Friday to see the latest Marvel installment. I’ve been a fan of Marvel over the years when it comes to their films. Yes, they’ve had a few relative duds (I’m looking at you, first Thor movie), but on the whole, their movies are action packed, funny, eye-popping bundles of joy. Joss Whedon has done some of my favorite television shows ever, and he directed the wonderful first Avengers movie, so my expectations were quite high.

This time, they were met. Not exceeded, but that would be hard in this case. At this point, I really don’t think there’s a need to review the movie for non-Marvel fans. If you haven’t liked the other Avengers-series movies, this one really isn’t going to change your mind. To me, it would be like reviewing a new comic book for non-fans. If you like comics, then the review might matter. If you don’t, then why are you reading a review about comics?

Anyway.

I’ve read some critiques of the movie, complaining that Marvel is essentially spreading too little butter across too much bread. That as they add more and more characters to their cinematic universe, it makes movies like Age of Ultron nothing more than a quick check in with all the different characters. That there’s no chance for individual characters to really shine or do anything significant.

I find this critique baseless.

An Avengers movie isn’t about having in-depth looks at the characters. That’s exactly why movies like Thor 2 or Iron Man 3 exist. An Avengers movie is all about the team work. All about all these different characters coming together to do something epic that they wouldn’t be able to do on their own. And in this respect, Age of Ultron really does a fantastic job. I loved how the Avengers as a team was almost a character in and of itself. The group has an arc that the entire movie is centered around, and I thought it was really well executed.

Other highlights of the film are definitely the action sequences and the special effects. You go to one of these to be sort of blown back in your seat, and the movie succeeds in doing that. The trademark Marvel humor is also well represented. Ultron was a cool character, and excellent voiced by James Spader.

Is the acting outstanding? Meh. It’s pretty solid, but my expectations from a superhero movie aren’t high in the acting department. All of the characters are good and consistent with who they should be, but by this point, I’ve began to notice a sort of Captain Jack Sparrow effect coming through. Iron Man is awesome in the first movie. Robert Downey Jr. did a great job. Same for the second. By this time, when we’ve had 5 different times to see Iron Man . . . what else can you really do with the character? This isn’t a slam on the movie or the acting. It’s just an observation, and it’s a good reason to have these movies continually update themselves.

It’s great that they’re adding in new characters to the team even as older characters move aside. That’s vital for this experiment to be able to continue to succeed.

In the end, it was a lot of fun. Very glad I saw it in the theaters, and I’m still a card carrying Marvel fan. What about you? What did you think?

Potty Training 3.0

There are many days when I wake up early in the morning and I envy Denisa for the chance she gets to sleep. I’m to work each day by about 6:45, and if you know me, you know I don’t love early mornings. But today, I didn’t envy Denisa one bit. Not a single iota.

Because today, she’s potty training MC.

That’s the plan, at least. I had to get special permission to blog about the topic today, since she really didn’t want to jinx herself. And today’s post isn’t all about how easy this is going to be or how ready we both are to have diapers make their way out of our house (though we certainly are). Today’s post is about how I literally have no real idea how this black magic works.

Yesterday, MC was completely reliant on diapers. By the end of today, Denisa’s goal is that MC will be potty trained. That’s a pretty darn big goal for a single Monday, and yet when I look back at our other two children, Denisa managed to pull it off both times.

How? I really don’t know. I know that she didn’t want me home on those days, and I know that she used the book Toilet Training in Less than a Day both times. I understand the basics of the approach, but I’ve never seen it in action. She’s always waited until the kids are 2 before doing it, but with each of our other kids, it’s been done as soon as possible once they reach that point. All I really know is my assignment is to come home and be really excited for MC and have her tell me all about it. That’s an assignment I can do.

It really makes me feel like I should have something more ambitious for myself lined up today. Maybe “Solve World Hunger” or “Break the Speed of Light.” Something that might be comparable, somehow.

Anyway. My thoughts are definitely with Denisa and MC today. Hoping everything is going great, but not calling, because they don’t need distractions. And if/when the potty training is actually complete and we’re done with diapers? There will be much rejoicing. Cloth diapers have been all eco-friendly, I know (and way lighter on the wallet), but hosing off diapers in the toilet every day? That’s something I’m pretty much ready to have over . . .

Step One: Hit a Turkey on the Freeway

You’ll all recall my little incident with a turkey on the freeway the other week. (For those of you wondering, the cost to repair said damage? Over $1,600. I decided to have them go ahead and fix it, since the front grill was completely dead and the bumped had gotten cracked right through. No real desire to have a ton of water rushing up inside the engine compartment when I’m driving, and once I’ve paid my $500 deductible, I don’t really care if it’s $1,000 total or $10,000 total. But still. Ouch.)

I took the car in yesterday to get repaired, and I got my rental to drive in the meantime. Apparently the one Enterprise had available was their lone Dodge Challenger. So I’ve replaced my Civic with a muscle car for the next week or so. I was kind of pleasantly bemused by this, but I knew someone who would be well and truly impressed with the upgrade:

TRC.

He’s gotten much more into cars the past few months, as he and his friends have started noticing there are differences in these four wheeled contraptions they’ve been driven around town all their lives in. When he came home and saw the car, the first words out of his mouth (in a tone of incredulous surprise) were, “They gave you a Dodge Challenger?“

I smiled and nodded. He wanted his picture taken with the car right away, and he promptly asked to sit in the driver’s seat. He then wanted the pic emailed to him, so he could forward it on to all his friends.

So I’m happy to say that my masterplan to be in with the cool fifth graders has finally come to fruition. Sure, it took 25 years, but I play the long game, folks. All I had to do was get old, hit a turkey on the freeway, and get a random rental car assigned to me.

Worked like a charm.

Now if only driving a Challenger made me feel as cool as it makes TRC feel . . .